The ability to control the dissolution of a down hole well structure in a variety of solutions is very important to the utilization of non-drillable completion tools, such as sleeves frack balls, hydraulic actuating tooling and the like. Reactive materials for this application, which dissolve or corrode when exposed to acid, salt, and/or other wellbore conditions, have been proposed for some time. Generally, these consist of materials that are engineered to dissolve or corrode. Dissolving polymers and some powder metallurgy metals have been disclosed, and are also used extensively in the pharmaceutical industry, for controlled release of drugs.
While these systems have enjoyed modest success in reducing well completion costs, their consistency and ability to specifically control dissolution rates in specific solutions, as well as other drawbacks such as limited strength and poor reliability, have impacted their ubiquitous adoption. Ideally, these structures would be manufactured by a process that is low cost, scalable, and produces a controlled corrosion rate having similar or increased strength as compared to traditional engineering alloys such as aluminum, magnesium, and iron. Ideally, traditional heat treatments, deformation processing, and machining techniques would be used without impacting the dissolution rate and reliability of such structures.